Casanova and his sugar-laced words. Always heated with dalliances. Always on the run. A culprit and a victim of love; a lady killer and no less a savior; Giacomo Casanova – his reputation precedes him.

About the movie itself, nothing will ever come closer to perfection, and Lord knows I’m hard to please. Here’s every reason why:

1.The setting is amazing. The sound sceneries of Venice, the pretty costumes, the lovely lute music from the Renaissance, the excellently-casted actors (many familiar faces), the colorful HOT AIR BALLOONS! Everything fits its context like a glove.

2. The sophisticated humour – one just can’t get enough. This is a beautiful comedy with great moral grounds beneath its facetious surface. A happy ending as well! (“Some day, everybody lives!” – to quote the 9th Doctor, ‘Doctor Who’)

3. The timing of ‘Casanova’ is impeccable (the movie truly lives up to the man of the name). It’s probably one of the very few two-and-a-half-hour movies that could manage not to bore its audience stiff. The right duration, the right proportion of humour and suspense. Flippancy in all seriousness.

4.What’s respectable about this movie is that it is substantially ‘clean’. Nothing to revealing, the movie intensifies the alluring force of Casanova by leaving things to the human imagination (as most movies fail to do). One would expect ‘Casanova’ to be quite on the touchy feely side, given the man’s reputation; it is, however, not really the case.

There are a few other enactments of ‘Casanova’ (with the same main characters and modified plots). I believe the BBC has made one starring David Tennant (nah who am I kidding, I watched that five times). The BBC version is a lot more cheeky bed-wise, but the moral of the story still stands. I’d suggest you watch both versions. They’re indeed superbly satisfying.

5.Since the first thing I look for in a movie is its purpose, I’d say that ‘Casanova’ does successfully manage to get the however banal message of ‘true love’ through. Love is a consummate of many qualities: goodwill, passion, loyalty, exclusivity, honesty, mystery, balance of the energy and soul… It’s a natural process – happens to the best of us. A typical Casanova in the modern days would rather take pride in their sexual conquers than submit to his bashful sentiments (reference: ‘Alfie’ the movie). But ‘Casanova’ promises us that the chase would end when a man finds a woman who’s worth it. The argument is not too convincing, mind you, but it at least gives us hope in the integrity of the human race in the face of intuitive urges.

Overall, I’d give this a score of 9.5/10 (always save room for the better!)

I can already see myself watching this again in the near future. If you’ve already seen this, you might want to check out the BBC version as well; I promise thee no regrets. The theme music for the BBC version of Casanova is simply mesmerizing. It’s written by Murray Gold, the same man who writes music for the later Doctor Who series (moment of silence for the musical talent).